General RIP Thread

The advent of the personal computer wasn’t just about making these powerful machines available to everyone, it was also about making them accessible and usable, even for those lacking a computer science degree. Larry Tesler, who passed away on Monday, might not be a household name like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but his contributions to making computers and mobile devices easier to use are the highlight of a long career influencing modern computing.

Born in 1945 in New York, Tesler went on to study computer science at Stanford University, and after graduation he dabbled in artificial intelligence research (long before it became a deeply concerning tool) and became involved in the anti-war and anti-corporate monopoly movements, with companies like IBM as one of his deserving targets. In 1973 Tesler took a job at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where he worked until 1980. Xerox PARC is famously known for developing the mouse-driven graphical user interface we now all take for granted, and during his time at the lab Tesler worked with Tim Mott to create a word processor called Gypsy that is best known for coining the terms “cut,” “copy,” and “paste” when it comes to commands for removing, duplicating, or repositioning chunks of text.

Xerox PARC is also well known for not capitalizing on the groundbreaking research it did in terms of personal computing, so in 1980 Tesler transitioned to Apple Computer where he worked until 1997. Over the years he held countless positions at the company including Vice President of Apple Net (Apple’s in-house local area networking system that was eventually canceled), and even served as Apple’s Chief Scientist, a position that at one time was held by Steve Wozniak, before eventually leaving the company.

In addition to his contributions to some of Apple’s most famous hardware, Tesler was also known for his efforts to make software and user interfaces more accessible. In addition to the now ubiquitous “cut,” “copy,” and “paste” terminologies, Tesler was also an advocate for an approach to UI design known as modeless computing, which is reflected in his personal website. In essence, it ensures that user actions remain consistent throughout an operating system’s various functions and apps. When they’ve opened a word processor, for instance, users now just automatically assume that hitting any of the alphanumeric keys on their keyboard will result in that character showing up on-screen at the cursor’s insertion point. But there was a time when word processors could be switched between multiple modes where typing on the keyboard would either add characters to a document or alternately allow functional commands to be entered.

There are still plenty of software applications where tools and functionality change depending on the mode they’re in (complex apps like Photoshop, for example, where various tools behave differently and perform very distinct functions) but for the most part modern operating systems like Apple’s macOS and Microsoft’s Windows have embraced user-friendliness through a less complicated modeless approach.

After leaving Apple in 1997, Tesler co-founded a company called Stagecast Software which developed applications that made it easier and more accessible for children to learn programming concepts. In 2001 he joined Amazon and eventually became the VP of Shopping Experience there, in 2005 he switched to Yahoo where he headed up that company’s user experience and design group, and then in 2008 he became a product fellow at 23andMe. According to his CV, Tesler left 23andMe in 2009 and from then on mostly focused on consulting work.

While there are undoubtedly countless other contributions Tesler made to modern computing as part of his work on teams at Xerox and Apple that may never come to light, his known contributions are immense. Tesler is one of the major reasons computer moved out of research centers and into homes.

Barbara "B." Smith, a steelworker's daughter who became one of the top black models on magazine covers in the 1970s and later parlayed her glamour and personality into ventures as a restaurateur, TV host and lifestyle maven, died Feb. 22 at her home in East Hampton, N.Y. She was 70.

Her death was announced in a statement by her family. Ms. Smith was diagnosed in 2013 with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and closed her restaurants - in Manhattan, on Long Island and at Union Station in Washington - over the next two years. She went on to champion Alzheimer's research with her husband and caretaker, Dan Gasby, with whom she published a 2016 book, "Before I Forget."

Ms. Smith - she shortened her first name to the initial "B." during her modeling career - was widely regarded as a leading African American entrepreneur in fields that had long been unwelcoming to minorities.

She wrote books, started a magazine and had a syndicated TV show, all focused on entertainment and hostessing. Although her audiences transcended race, she often was described as a "black Martha Stewart." Ms. Smith said she found the comparison "a little tired."

"Martha Stewart has presented herself doing the things domestics and African Americans have done for years," she once told New York magazine. "We were always expected to redo the chairs and use everything in the garden. This is the legacy that I was left. Martha just got there first."

Acclaimed physicist Freeman Dyson, who pondered the origins of life, interstellar travel and many other topics, died Friday at the age of 96.

His daughter Mia Dyson told NPR that her father died after a short illness.

Freeman Dyson was known for groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics but his curiosity ranged far beyond those fields.

"He never got a Ph.D.," says Robbert Dijkgraaf, director for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where Dyson worked. "He felt he was an eternal graduate student, and so he had a license to be interested in everything."

Dyson was born in Crowthorne, England, in 1923. He studied physics and mathematics at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he worked with physicists including Paul Dirac and Arthur Eddington. During World War II, he was a civilian scientist with the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command.

After the war, he came to the U.S. to study physics. Together with physicist Richard Feynman, he was able to reconcile two competing theories of quantum electrodynamics, the study of how sub-atomic particles and light interact. "He was able to show that all these different points of view were one and the same thing," Dijkgraaf says. "He was a great unifier of physics."

The work is still considered fundamental to modern physics. "The current model of elementary particle physics is written in the language that Dyson helped develop," he says.

Dyson permanently joined the Institute for Advanced Study in 1953. From his perch there, he pursued many other topics of interest. He helped to design an inherently safe nuclear reactor that could be operated "even in the hands of an idiot." In 1958, he joined Project Orion, a plan to power a spacecraft with controlled nuclear explosions.

The spaceship was never built, but Dyson later described it as "the most exciting and in many ways happiest of my scientific life." Dijkgraaf says Dyson was probably one of the few people on Earth that felt let down by the 1969 moon landings: "This all looked very disappointing in Freeman's eyes," he says. Dyson wanted to go to Saturn with nuclear-fueled rockets. "[He] was kind of envisioning jet planes, and in the end we took a bicycle."

Joe Coulombe, who created Trader Joe's with a vision that college-educated but poorly paid young people would flock to a store that stocked healthy foods at bargain prices, died late Friday. He was 89.

Coulombe, who opened his first Trader Joe's in Pasadena, California, in 1967, died following a long illness, his son, Joe Coulombe, told The Associated Press.

The chain that still bears his name, as well as the quirky South Seas nautical appearance Coulombe created, now has more than 500 outlets in over 40 states. It still draws a niche audience looking for cheap prices on healthy gourmet foods that often can't be found in traditional supermarkets.

Shelves are filled with products such as organic dried mango, ocean-caught shrimp, honey-oat cereal and organic cold-pressed juice.

"He wanted to make sure whatever was sold in our store was of good value," said Coulombe's son. "He always did lots of taste tests. My sisters and I remember him bringing home all kinds of things for us to try. At his offices he had practically daily tastings of new products. Always the aim was to provide good food and good value to people."

He achieved that by buying directly from wholesalers and cutting out the middleman, then slapping the name Trader Joe's on his purchases.